God’s providence is all-encompassing; He works all things according to the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11). Today’s article deals specifically with how God works His will with regard to His Church:

As the providence of God does, in general, reach to all creatures; so, after a most special manner, it takes care of His Church, and disposes all things to the good thereof.

God disposes all things to the good of the Church. This plays out individually as well as corporately. He is progressively sanctifying not just individual Christians, but also the church as a living entity in its own right: the Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:26).

This doctrine is of course most firmly rooted in Romans 8:28, which states that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. We often do not grasp the exhaustive nature of this statement.

While God is providentially sovereign over all things, He most often uses means. Because of this, the world is a rather complicated web of interconnected contingencies. This is a fancy way of saying that you might not have even been born if World War I hadn’t happened. If the Revolutionary War or the HP-Compaq merger had gone a different way, you might have vastly different political views and (perhaps) a mohawk.

All of this is to say that the world is complicated and its happenings are very interdependent. God is not only providentially arranging all things to keep the world from exploding in any one of a million different ways (many of them, I think, would involve our clearly excessive production of hair products). He is also actively working each and every individual thing out to benefit His Church. McDonald’s, microwaves, and Magnum P.I. were ordained for your good. And if the Supreme Court rules in favor of gay marriage, that decision is also providentially ordained for your good.